


to when the stars were ours

by yukends (dowarae)



Series: character study [3]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Gen, Short, kinda poetry, space imagery, the worst thing ive ever written, v v short, yuwin if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 21:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17650268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dowarae/pseuds/yukends
Summary: it starts like this:yuta wakes up to the glare of the stars.





	to when the stars were ours

**Author's Note:**

> me: unhappy  
> fic: bad  
> posted: anyways
> 
> also it's unedited lol and it's kinda related to i once loved the stars, but you don't have to read that one, it's just set in the same universe

it starts like this:

nakamoto yuta wakes up to the glare of the stars. he’s greeted with a backlit silhouette that tells him _welcome_ , a hand that reaches out to take his (a gentle gesture that yuta isn’t too familiar with) but there’s something about the silhouette that says _trust me,_ and yuta does.

so, he takes the hand and he’s pulled to his feet. he’s met with soft brown eyes and hair the colour mountain ranges in the sunset, pinks and browns blending together in perfect harmony. and yuta’s momentarily speechless.

the boy blinks back at him, a knowing smile stretching across his face and yuta’s heart stutters. “i’m sicheng, and you must be yuta.” the boy – sicheng - says, and his voice is like the ocean. smooth and flowing and everything yuta finds beautiful, and it feels like he’s back to a time when things were different and the ocean was still blue. and there’s so much nostalgia to the way sicheng speaks that yuta wonders how long he’s been here.

yuta nods, hair bouncing into his eyes. he opens his mouth to ask the boy how he knows, or even where he is but he hasn’t taken his eyes off of sicheng to really look around. “i’ve been expecting you,” sicheng says, a hand reaching to brush the hair out of yuta’s face. and there’s something so delicate about the action, something so lonely that yuta feels tears well in his eyes. “it’s been so long.” sicheng says as he removes his hand.

yuta swallows, blinking away the wetness in his eyes, “how long?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper. sicheng hesitates in his answer but yuta feels a star die in the distance and he takes that instead.

the conversation stops there and yuta takes that as an opportunity to look around. he’s met with darkness but there’s something so familiar and comfortable that yuta feels like he’s greeting an old friend. throughout the dark he sees the potential, and he knows what he’s supposed to do.

because now he remembers that everything has a role, and so does he. there’s glimmers of what’s supposed to be and what already has, and he looks over to sicheng, feeling overwhelmed but complete. “we… create?” he asks, meeting sicheng’s eyes.

sicheng nods, hair silver-pink in the starlight. “yes, we always have.”

yuta looks back out towards the vast darkness around them, below them, above them. he feels sicheng move to his side, look out along with him. “then why don’t i remember anything.”

he feels sicheng glance his way, “because you just got here. thing’s like this take time, you know.”

yuta sighs, his breath gold and blue. he makes a sound when he sees it, watches in mild disbelief as it drifts into the darkness, casting light as it goes, expanding. and eventually it stops several hundred feet away from the two.

sicheng lets out a soft laugh, “a nebula.” he says, voice quiet, nostalgic. on the verge of affectionate. “nebulae are your favourite to create.”

yuta hums, because he does know. there’s something in the way he felt watching the gas float that he feels suddenly dizzy, adrift. his eyes don’t leave the nebula for a while longer, he’s entranced with the way it moves and shifts and the way it pushes against the darkness around it.

“i remember japan.” yuta says suddenly, head turning to look at sicheng.

sicheng looks at him, understanding. “and you always will, just like i’ll always remember china. but it’ll fade, and you’ll remember the rest.”

yuta looks down, then back towards the nebula. “what if i don’t want it to fade?” he asks, hands fidgeting at his sides. “what if i don’t want to forget anything about it?” he bites his lip, closes his eyes tightly.

he feels sicheng place his hand on his shoulder, and the action is so familiar to yuta that something within him feels tight. “no one ever wants it to fade, yuta. but that’s how it works. we’ll always end up unable to remember the times before this.” there’s something in sicheng’s voice that has yuta looking over at him, meeting his eyes. and there’s so much kindness within them that yuta doesn’t know what to feel.

so he looks away and focuses on the glow of newly born stars. “what now?” he asks, voice quiet. there’s a small burst of yellow and red and blue from his lips but it fades, nothing supporting to grow and develop into anything it had the potential to be.

and he dreads sicheng’s answer, dreads the response because he knows it – he’s always known it but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. because even though he’s spent no time in this space, he has millennia of memories in his head, all jumbled and fragmented and he can’t sort it. but there’s one, that feels almost like a part of himself, that’s been there as long as he has. he doesn’t remember _not_ remembering it and it’s the part of him that says _there’s nothing now, now you live._ and there’s a sense of loss that takes him over, a fear that they’ll stay stagnant, never moving forward.

and he knows it’s the humanity left over in him and it’ll eventually fade but he can’t let go of the feeling of japan in the summer. or the sound of japanese in his ears, the flow. because what he and sicheng speak is nothing, their mouths move but there’s no sound but the meaning is there, ingrained in the time and space between them and yuta knows he understands because he’s been with sicheng long enough that he there’s no way he couldn’t.

and there’s nothing he can do besides watch planets explode in the distance and he feels it like a blow to his chest. and there’s suddenly a feeling within himself  that he doesn’t know how to describe as sicheng takes his hand, tells him _there’s something i want you to see._ and he let’s sicheng take him to where the stars end, a vast expanse of nothing and empty space and yuta can’t help but stare in wonder.

and there’s so much history in this spot that it gets to be overwhelming and he feels every single death of every planet and star, the collapse of the solar systems. and yuta finds it so beautiful, the fact there’s so much there through the expanse of pure nothing, sees the building and destruction of everything that was in the span of a moment.

and he turns to look behind him, blinks in the starlight, and he feels whole. standing between what is a what was, he feels as if this is what he was meant to do, as if he finally knows his purpose. and the years of memories in his head have sudden pattern that yuta knows is the reason they are.

because once one arrives, another has to leave.

the separation, the search.

the necessary components to assuring the stability of the universe. everything has a beginning and an end and yuta knows that he and sicheng have a millennia left before it’s sicheng’s time to forget. the cycle continues, ensures movement. and yuta feels suddenly ridiculous for thinking they could ever stay the way they are. they could never be allowed that luxury.

and sicheng tugs his hand once more, pulls him away from the spot. every step they take leaves a burst of light, a moment that has never been and already has. and as they walk along the stars, the solar systems in yuta’s palms find a place in the universe. and every breath he takes becomes a dream and he feels himself slipping back into who he was before his turn. and the memories of the old replace those of the new and japan becomes distant.

and they continue, together for so long yuta forgets he ever did anything else. but there’s still the pull of what was in the back of his mind, an acknowledgment that he’s always been the one that struggles to let go. he thinks maybe it’s because he was human once, or maybe he was supposed to be. and he finds himself clinging to any feeling he can because the stars are cold and he knows them but that doesn’t mean he considers them home.

and his time with sicheng is running out. and the overlap is always too long and not long enough all at once. and yuta’s scared of being left alone because he doesn’t know if he can do this without sicheng. he doesn’t know if he can bring the same sense of completion to everything he creates like sicheng can, like sicheng does. but he doesn’t voice it because his companion already knows and it’s the gentle looks of encouragement that keep yuta afloat. there’s so much that sicheng is that yuta isn’t and that’s why they work.

and the memories he has of the times when sicheng’s gone are dark and greyscale.

monochromatic.

because somewhere, yuta knows he’s not meant to do this alone. everything he creates is a spark compared to sicheng’s flame, who’s eyes hold more stars than the entire universe. and sicheng, with planets hidden in his mountain range hair and sunlight palms, is so perfect and _adequate_ in ways yuta isn’t and he knows what he’s doing, has confidence in himself. trusts he’s doing it right.

and he knows they’re both here for a reason, that his way of thinking is unnecessary and wrong – he wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a will for it. but he pales in comparison to sicheng, his breath of nebulae and fingers of solar systems mean nothing without sicheng’s light.

and it’s for that, he knows why everything that happens is necessary. it’s for that, he knows there’s no balance if sicheng stays.

the universe depends on the separation, the greyscale bleeding into the rainbow array of what sicheng leaves behind. the only colour yuta has is the breath from his lungs. and there would be no depth in anything that happened if they didn’t take breaks, because what would they be if not perfectly harmonized apart.

being together causes more strain than either of them are really willing to admit.

and yuta knows that the years are counting down fast and in one more blink of an eye, in once more heartbeat, sicheng will be pulled from his side, stripped of anything that makes sicheng who he is.

because once the search begins, the stars have time to die. the space has time to reset, adjust to the newfound sense of full that comes from reuniting. and gives time for the colours to fade, for yuta to replace bright purples and brilliant reds with dull greys and off whites.

and he always dreads it, because in yuta’s mind there’s nothing more beautiful than what sicheng creates, nothing with as much power or grace. and it’s for that, the humanity within him that he can’t seem to rid, they can’t stay together.

there’s nothing for them if they do.

the overabundance of what would be becomes shadowed by a continuous cycle that, now, centuries since yuta came back, he doesn’t know he could live without. because the countless memories flooding his mind tell him he’s nothing without this cycle, nothing without the search and the thrill of success of finding sicheng, of making him remember.

and yuta’s overcome with a calm he’s never felt before, an acceptance of who he isn’t. and he knows that sicheng could full well give up on his end of the bargain – everything would be perfectly fine.

“you know i would never do that.” sicheng whispers to him as they wander through a field of stars, galaxies twirling around their feet. yuta looks over at him, watches him pick a planet like a flower, inspect it in his palm.

they have less than a century left together, a blink of an eye and sicheng will go.

“but that doesn’t mean i won’t think about it.”

and there’s a sadness to the way sicheng places the planet back in its place, watches it spin lazily, “yuta, you know there would be nothing without you here.”

and yuta’s breath comes out dark, a black and red that spins and twirls and swallows galaxies whole.

because what does he do but destroy.

create to destroy, the essence of yuta that he knows is the perfect balance to sicheng. and says, “lying won’t get us anywhere, sicheng.”

a star bursts in sicheng’s palm, all of what it once was dancing around his fingertips. they have less than a century and this isn’t how its supposed to end. and yuta’s too human, too connected to everything around him, within him to understand that this is how it _has to be_. that both of them have a role that the other can’t fulfill.

and the years are counting down, a decade before they separate and yuta tries to let humanity go.

but it started like this:

yuta woke to the glare of stars it wasn’t his time to see.


End file.
